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Lighting Design Guide For Offices: 1) Working Plane
Lighting Design Guide For Offices: 1) Working Plane
LdG-1
Lighting design Guide for offices
Introduction
The importance of office lighting to achieve basic requirements relating to the health and
safety of people at work is crucial, that is why it is the first one in my series of lighting
guides.
1) working Plane
The working plane in office area is considered
0.75 or 0.8 form floor level which is the
standard height of a table.
When standard is asking for 500 Lux it should
be achieved at this height for the office area.
In this guide 0.75 will be considered as the
height for the office area.
The working plane for a corridor is 0.2
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
2) Task Area
The task defines the size of the working plane for calculation inside a space and could have
of the following situation
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
The UGR is an approximate model that express the chance of direct glare by Luminaire, the
higher the figure, the greater the chance of glare.
Example of office area where the requirement of UGR limit is 19 then value should not
exceed 19; it could be lower or equal 19
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
Glare
Glare is difficulty seeing in the presence of bright light against darker surrounding.
Glare is caused by a significant ratio of luminance between the task and the background
The high contrast make seeing more difficult and a good example is the head light of the car
where at day time there is no high contrast between the headlight and the background then
there is no glare, but at night where headlight is much higher than the surrounding
(background) then it could cause glare especially if there is no street light (darker
background)
Where the disability glare could be found mostly outdoor and can cause disability of vision,
the discomfort glare where present will not disable the vision but will make the environment
not comfortable.
Direct glare
Reflected glare
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
To reduce glare
Fist selects the right luminaire that reduces the light that is coming to the eyes
Luminaire with good cut-off angles that cut Luminaire without cut off angle
the light above 65o
Secondly reduce the contrast between the luminaire and the background by ensuring good
light at ceiling and walls.
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
UGR factors
Let us have a look at the factors that could increase or decrease the UGR values
The “8“ is just a constant factor that gives the UGR numbers which normally sit
in a range between 10 and 30
This takes into account that our eyes respond logarythmically to light
This is the background luminance, the higher it is the lower is the UGR value
The solid angle of the lumi-naire from the observer‘s position represents the size
of the glare source
The so-called Guth index represents the position of the luminaire in relation to
the line of sight of the observer. It gets bigger the further it is away.
Form the formula above, we can see that the following will affect the UGR
1. Luminance of the luminaire
2. The luminance of the background
3. The position of the luminaries
1. Select the right luminaire with low luminance (low brightness) at angles between 65o
and 85o.
2. Consider a good position for luminaire in relation to the observer (software like
DIALux could be helpful in this case).
3. Increasing the brightness of the background (walls and ceiling)
For more information on luminance you can see the following link
http://ezzatbaroudi.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/using-a-quantitative-measure-to-achieve-a-qualitative-
lighting-design-effect/
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
Luminaire
The standard set new values for the maximum luminance of luminaires as shown in the
following table
Table 4 gives the limits of the average luminaire luminance at elevation angles of 65° and
above from the downward vertical, radially around the luminaires, for work stations where
display screens which are vertical or inclined up to 15° tilt angle are used.
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
Where visual tasks are performed mainly on a vertical plane, that plane is the
task area.
The vertical task area reference surface starts 0.5 m above floor level and, in
the case of an office shelving system, ends 2.0 m above floor level
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
Using wallwasher- A luminaire that distribute the light to walls is a good technic to
ensure bight walls
The EN-12464-1 recommends a minimum value wall and ceiling as follows, however for
brighter appearance a higher value is considered good practice
Wall 75 lx U0 ≥ 0,10
Ceiling 50 lx U0 ≥ 0,10
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
A high cylindrical illuminance is important for the perception of vertical planes and objects.
It is enhancing particularly the recognition of faces.
Maintained illuminance must be no lower than 50 lx. In places where good visual
communication is crucial, e.g. in an office, meeting room or classroom, maintained
illuminance should be raised to 150 lx.
This requirement needs to be met at 1.2 m above floor level for seated persons and 1.6 m
above floor level for persons standing in activity and interior areas.
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For the above 5 ambient lighting scenes an accent lighting scene there was added
The four scenes added to the above 5 ambient lighting scenes
1. No accent lighting at all.
2. Accent lighting on table.
3. Accent lighting on wall.
4. Accent lighting on table and wall.
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
The purpose of the investigation is to find out, what the best lighting scene is for each one of
the following criteria
1. Brightness
2. Attractiveness
3. Activation
4. Well-being
The results was displayed by tables that have both colors and numbers
Color representation
The greener the color the higher rating has
the scene in particular criteria
The other way round the red is the worst.
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Number representation
Because color could be similar, a number
give more precise rating
The lower the value represents the better
rating for the scene in particular criteria.
The other way round the warmer the worse.
The rating was form 1 to 5
1 is the best , 5 is the worst
Brightness
For the brightness the best scene was
Ambient wall-wash and Accent (1.93)
While the worst scene for brightness is only
direct lighting which is the most common
scene you can find in an office!
Attractiveness
The most attractive scene was with value
(2.09)
Ambient lighting (Direct lighting + wall-
washing) and accent on table and wall.
The worst is the indirect lighting (3.81)
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Activation
The best scene to keep people active is two
scene with value of (2.32)
Indirect lighting with accent lighting on table
and wall
or Ambient lighting (Direct lighting + wall-
washing) and accent on table and wall.
The worst is indirect lighting
Well-being
The best scene for well-being has the value
of (2.23) which is
Ambient lighting (Direct lighting + wall-
washing) and accent on table and wall
The worst is indirect lighting
My conclusions
The results are self-explanatory but I would like to highlight some points
1. The most common office lighting I have experienced in many offices is
the direct lighting. Engineers love it!
Despite that the direct lighting being the most cost effective and best for
energy efficiency, but it is the worst for brightness perception, the
second worst for the rest scenes (attractiveness, activation and well-
being)!
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
But when accent lighting was added to indirect lighting, the result was dramatically
changed
Adding accent lighting on table and wall
changed the indirect lighting from worst scene
for attractiveness to be second best!
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
3. Many Engineers ask for very high uniformaty in all the room!
Uniformaty is required only in task area and adding accent lighting will change uniformaty
If we want to take the best scene in DIAL results we find that Ambient lighting (Direct lighting
+ wall-washing) and accent on table and wall is close to the best in brightness and the best in the
rest criteria (attractiveness , activation and well being) which makes it very good guideline for
designing an office.
Of course there can’t be one rule or scene for every office every time and there are many other
factors but it could be very good idea to consider adding wall wash and accent lighting to
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Case Study
In the plan below we can see 5 deferent areas
1. Open plan office
2. Individual office (MD office)
3. Meeting room
4. Waiting area
5. Corridor
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
Many engineers like to design all the rooms by just putting 60x60 fluorescent luminaire in a grid
system, the follow layout shows the most common lighting design by many engineers, which is fairly
simple and doesn’t give any quality of lighting, according to DIAL investigation it is the worst for
brightness perception, the second worst for the rest scenes (attractiveness, activation and well-being)!
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
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The luminaire used is 3x14w T5 fluorescent with very efficient luminaire and the average
illuminance is higher than 500 lux in all the room with very uniform lighting!
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
In the next layout I am going to purpose an alternative solution that have Ambient lighting (Direct
lighting + wall-washing) and accent on table and walls (the secene that was found best in DIAL
invastagating for office lighting)
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
The downlight (wf) is a downlight with ERCO 83238 with Extra wide distribution
Wallwasher (ww) ERCO 84014
Downlight with oval flood distribution for the corridor ERCO 80032
Spot light for accent lighting (S) ERCO 40104 to highlight the painting on the wall and the meeting
table on the MD office
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
Spacing and offset for wallwasher and spotlight for accent lighting
The role of thumb , wallwasher should have an offset form the wall of 1/3 the wall height and the
spacing between the wall-washers is equal to the offset (if wall height is 3 meter then the offset
form wall should be 1 meter and spacing is one meter)
Accent lighting for a 3 meter height wall should be 850-1000 mm as an offset form wall to have 30o
tilt.
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
Offset a is 1/3 of the wall height Spotlight offset form wall for
Spacing d is equal to offset however some new accent lighting for a painting on walls
wallwasher form ERCO could be spaced up to
1.5 times the offset
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
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LdG-1 Lighting design Guide for offices Ezzat Baroudi
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